Health Care, Obama, Israel Lobby

I discuss the health care issue with Anisa Abdel Fattah in an interview on America in Focus.

I did not expect to be interviewed for the whole show or I would have prepared more.

Here is the Adam Smith passage that was mentioned:

...every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.

The hand itself is not benevolent. Although Smith did believe in a benevolent God that maximized human happiness, his definition of maximized human happiness was an average in which the immense happiness of one wealthy person would balance out the miserable state of hundreds or of thousands. In addition, I am not sure that the natives in the colonies counted as fully human in Smith's thinking.

Other blog entries connected with this topic include:

• [wvns] The Epoch Battle of Our Time
• [wvns] mexico's health care lures americans
• [wvns] americans get health care in mexico
• [wvns] medical fraud's staggering price tag
• [wvns] US vs UK health care
• us covers israeli health care

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